Keep examines Kingsley’s sermons to the congregation at Eversley during
the relatively unstable social and political period 1849-1854, the time
Kingsley’s own radical views and writing were at their peak. He declares
that though these village sermons were clearly written and free from theological
jargon they were on the whole not very extremist nor exciting. They
were particularly limited “in their failure to deal with the profound theological
questions posed by unitarianism and the questions raised by higher criticism”
(214). However, they did reveal “an optimistic eschatology that God
was working through technological progress and that change should be welcomed”
(215).

Muller, Charles H. “The Christian Didactics and the
Sermons of Charles Kingsley,” Communiqué Vol.
9, No. 1 (1984): 14-44.In a lengthy article Muller declares that Kingsley the preacher was
essentially a teacher. He examines Kingsley’ style of preaching,
his didactic methodology, and his socio-theological didactics. He
declares that Kingsley was a forceful and emotional preacher, sometimes
dynamic and dramatic, but frequently lacking in incisive intellectual argumentation.
When he expounded Scripture and taught about God, whether he preached to
the unsophisticated in Eversley or to royals at the Chapel Royal or Windsor
he was invariably didactic. He was consistent in his didactic material:
“the statutes of a loving but just God. God is often revealed as
severe and terribly exacting. But there are times when God is seen
as the author of benevolence and mercy” (33). Muller declares that
the didactic purpose of Kingsley’s sermons is primarily ethical-moral.
“It teaches, essentially, that there can be no change in the social order,
no purposeful progress towards the perfect realization of God’s kingdom
on earth, without a spiritual revolution first taking place within the
heart and life of the individual. Freedom from sin will mean a new
spiritual democracy, when men have the strength to resist sin and choose
the right” (39).